1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to containment curtains and, more specifically but not limited to, containment curtains for rooms which typically have multiple occupancy as well as systems and apparatuses including such containment curtains.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following descriptions and examples are not admitted to be prior art by virtue of their inclusion within this section.
Area/room disinfection is becoming increasingly important as pathogenic microorganisms have been shown to cause infections when present in occupied rooms or areas. This is especially important as antimicrobial resistant organisms are becoming more prevalent and increasingly difficult to treat. Examples of area/room disinfection applications are those used in hospitals and those used in agricultural operations, such as for breeding and/or farming animals. In general, the objective of area/room disinfection is to reduce the number of pathogenic microorganisms in an area/room to a level which is much less harmful to human health. In order to limit or prevent exposure of germicides and/or distractions to occupants of a room or area, area/room disinfection is typically performed by trained cleaning personnel or by an automated device after a room has been vacated by the previous occupants. Complete evacuation of some areas/rooms, however, is sometimes difficult to attain due to the use of the area/room. For example, multiple occupancy rooms, such as but not limited to multiple occupancy patient rooms in hospitals, and/or relatively large high traffic areas with ambiguous boundaries, such as but not limited to nurses' stations in hospitals, can sometimes be difficult to evacuate for disinfection of the entire area/room.
In some embodiments, portions of multiple occupancy rooms and/or relatively large high traffic areas can be sectioned off using a room divider to establish a vacated area for area/room disinfection procedures. For example, a cubicle curtain in a multiple occupancy patient room may be drawn around a single patient bed after the patient has left or a floor based paneled screen may be used to section off a portion of an area/room. In many of such cases, however, the room divider does not provide a barricade from floor to ceiling and, in some embodiments, the body portion of the room divider may be partially transparent and/or have open areas. Consequently, in many of such cases, persons occupying an area/room outside a region sectioned off by the room divider are undesirably exposed to the germicide and/or distractions of a disinfection process performed in the sectioned off region. For some disinfection processes, such as but not limited to those which utilize ultraviolet electromagnetic radiation subtype C (UVC) light, human exposure to the germicide is prohibited or needs to be minimized to undetectable levels and, thus, such disinfection processes typically cannot be used for regions of an area/room sectioned off by a room divider which is transparent and/or does not completely barricade a region.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to develop screens which serve to better barricade regions of a room, particularly in conjunction with but not limited to existing room dividers. In addition, it would be advantageous to develop systems and apparatuses including such screens. It would be further beneficial to configure the screens, systems, and apparatuses to be easily set up, handled and stored.